London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics)

by Henry Mayhew

  Such are the several varieties of street-folk, intellectually considered – looked at in a national point of view, they likewise include many distinct people. Among them are to be found the Irish fruit-sellers; the Jew clothesmen; the Italian organ boys, French singing women, the German brass bands, the Dutch buy-a-broom girls, the Highland bagpipe players, and the Indian crossing-sweepers – all of whom I here shall treat of in due order.

  The costermongering class or order has also its many varieties. These appear to be in the following proportions: One-half of the entire class are costermongers proper, that is to say, the calling with them is hereditary, and perhaps has been so for many generations; while the other half is composed of three-eighths Irish, and one-eighth mechanics, tradesmen, and Jews.

  Under the term ‘costermonger’ is here included only such ‘street-sellers’ as deal in fish, fruit, and vegetables, purchasing their goods at the wholesale ‘green’ and fish markets. Of these some carry on their business at the same stationary stall or ‘standing’ in the street, while others go on ‘rounds’. The itinerant costermongers, as contradistinguished from the stationary street-fishmongers and greengrocers, have in many instances regular rounds, which they go daily, and which extend from two to ten miles. The longest are those which embrace a suburban part; the shortest are through streets thickly peopled by the poor, where duly to ‘work’ a single street consumes, in some instances, an hour. There are also ‘chance’ rounds. Men ‘working’ these carry their wares to any part in which they hope to find customers. The costermongers, moreover, diversify their labours by occasionally going on a country round, travelling on these excursions, in all directions, from thirty to ninety and even a hundred miles from the metropolis. Some, again, confine their callings chiefly to the neighbouring races and fairs.

  Of all the characteristics attending these diversities of traders, I shall treat severally. I may here premise, that the regular or ‘thorough-bred costermongers’, repudiate the numerous persons who sell only nuts or oranges in the streets, whether at a fixed stall, or any given locality, or who hawk them through the thoroughfares or parks. They repudiate also a number of Jews, who confine their street-trading to the sale of ‘cokernuts’ on Sundays, vended from large barrows. Nor do they rank with themselves the individuals who sell tea and coffee in the streets, or such condiments as peas-soup, sweetmeats, spice-cakes, and the like; those articles not being purchased at the markets. I often heard all such classes called ‘the illegitimates’.

  Of Costermongering Mechanics

  [p. 9] ‘From the numbers of mechanics,’ said one smart costermonger to me, ‘that I know of in my own district, I should say there’s now more than 1,000 costers in London that were once mechanics or labourers. They are driven to it as a last resource, when they can’t get work at their trade. They don’t do well, at least four out of five, or three out of four don’t. They’re not up to the dodges of the business. They go to market with fear, and don’t know how to venture a bargain if one offers. They’re inferior salesmen too, and if they have fish left that won’t keep, it’s a dead loss to them, for they aren’t up to the trick of selling it cheap at a distance where the coster ain’t known; or of quitting it to another, for candle-light sale, cheap, to the Irish or to the “lushingtons”, that haven’t a proper taste for fish. Some of these poor fellows lose every penny. They’re mostly middle-aged when they begin costering. They’ll generally commence with oranges or herrings. We pity them. We say, “Poor fellows! they’ll find it out by-and-bye.” It’s awful to see some poor women, too, trying to pick up a living in the streets by selling nuts or oranges. It’s awful to see them, for they can’t set about it right; besides that, there’s too many before they start. They don’t find a living, it’s only another way of starving.’

  Of the Costermongers ‘Economically’ Considered

  [pp. 10–11] Political economy teaches us that, between the two great classes of producers and consumers, stand the distributors – or dealers – saving time, trouble, and inconvenience to, the one in disposing of, and to the other in purchasing, their commodities.

  But the distributor was not always a part and parcel of the economical arrangements of the State. In olden times, the producer and consumer were brought into immediate contact, at markets and fairs, holden at certain intervals. The inconvenience of this mode of operation, however, was soon felt; and the pedlar, or wandering distributor, sprang up as a means of carrying the commodities to those who were unable to attend the public markets at the appointed times. Still the pedlar or wandering distributor was not without his disadvantages. He only came at certain periods, and commodities were occasionally required in the interim. Hence the shopkeeper, or stationary distributor, was called into existence, so that the consumer might obtain any commodity of the producer at any time he pleased. Hence we see that the pedlar is the primitive tradesman, and that the one is contradistinguished from the other by the fact, that the pedlar carries the goods to the consumer, whereas, in the case of the shopkeeper, the consumer goes after the goods. In country districts, remote from towns and villages, the pedlar is not yet wholly superseded; ‘but a dealer who has a fixed abode, and fixed customers, is so much more to be depended on,’ says Mr Stewart Mill, ‘that consumers prefer resorting to him if he is conveniently accessible, and dealers, therefore, find their advantage in establishing themselves in every locality where there are sufficient customers near at hand to afford them a remuneration.’ Hence the pedlar is now chiefly confined to the poorer districts, and is consequently distinguished from the stationary tradesman by the character and means of his customers, as well as by the amount of capital and extent of his dealings. The shopkeeper supplies principally the noblemen and gentry with the necessaries and luxuries of life, but the pedlar or hawker is the purveyor in general to the poor. He brings the greengrocery, the fruit, the fish, the water-cresses, the shrimps, the pies and puddings, the sweetmeats, the pine-apples, the stationery, the linendrapery, and the jewellery, such as it is, to the very door of the working classes; indeed, the poor man’s food and clothing are mainly supplied to him in this manner. Hence the class of travelling tradesmen are important, not only as forming a large portion of the poor themselves, but as being the persons through whom the working people obtain a considerable part of their provisions and raiment.

  But the itinerant tradesman or street-seller is still further distinguished from the regular fixed dealer – the stallkeeper from the shopkeeper – the street-wareman from the warehouseman, by the arts they respectively employ to attract custom. The street-seller cries his goods aloud at the head of his barrow; the enterprising tradesman distributes bills at the door of his shop. The one appeals to the ear, the other to the eye. The cutting costermonger has a drum and two boys to excite attention to his stock; the spirited shopkeeper has a column of advertisements in the morning newspapers. They are but different means of attaining the same end.

  The London Street Markets on a Saturday Night

  [pp. 11–12] The street-sellers are to be seen in the greatest numbers at the London street markets on a Saturday night. Here, and in the shops immediately adjoining, the working-classes generally purchase their Sunday’s dinner; and after pay-time on Saturday night, or early on Sunday morning, the crowd in the New-cut, and the Brill in particular, is almost impassable. Indeed, the scene in these parts has more of the character of a fair than a market. There are hundreds of stalls, and every stall has its one or two lights; either it is illuminated by the intense white light of the new self-generating gas-lamp, or else it is brightened up by the red smoky flame of the old-fashioned grease lamp. One man shows off his yellow haddock with a candle stuck in a bundle of firewood; his neighbour makes a candlestick of a huge turnip, and the tallow gutters over its sides; whilst the boy shouting ‘Eight a penny, stunning pears!’ has rolled his dip in a thick coat of brown paper, that flares away with the candle. Some stalls are crimson with the fire shining through the holes beneath the baked chestn
ut stove; others have handsome octohedral lamps, while a few have a candle shining through a sieve: these, with the sparkling ground-glass globes of the tea-dealers’ shops, and the butchers’ gaslights streaming and fluttering in the wind, like flags of flame, pour forth such a flood of light, that at a distance the atmosphere immediately above the spot is as lurid as if the street were on fire.

  The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street-sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. ‘So-old again,’ roars one. ‘Chestnuts all ’ot, a penny a score,’ bawls another. ‘An ’aypenny a skin, blacking,’ squeaks a boy. ‘Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy – bu-u-uy!’ cries the butcher. ‘Half-quire of paper for a penny,’ bellows the street stationer. ‘An ’aypenny a lot ing-uns.’ ‘Twopence a pound grapes.’ ‘Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters.’ ‘Who’ll buy a bonnet for fourpence?’ ‘Pick ’em out cheap here! three pair for a halfpenny, bootlaces.’ ‘Now’s your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.’ ‘Here’s ha’p’orths,’ shouts the perambulating confectioner. ‘Come and look at ’em! here’s toasters!’ bellows one with a Yarmouth bloater stuck on a toasting-fork. ‘Penny a lot, fine russets,’ calls the apple woman: and so the Babel goes on.

  One man stands with his red-edged mats hanging over his back and chest, like a herald’s coat; and the girl with her basket of walnuts lifts her brown-stained fingers to her mouth, as she screams, ‘Fine warnuts! sixteen a penny, fine war-r-nuts.’ A bootmaker, to ‘ensure custom’, has illuminated his shop-front with a line of gas, and in its full glare stands a blind beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show only ‘the whites’, and mumbling some begging rhymes, that are drowned in the shrill notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to him. The boy’s sharp cry, the woman’s cracked voice, the gruff, hoarse shout of the man, are all mingled together. Sometimes an Irishman is heard with his ‘fine ating apples’; or else the jingling music of an unseen organ breaks out, as the trio of street singers rest between the verses.

  Then the sights, as you elbow your way through the crowd, are equally multifarious. Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling with white glass. Now you come to a row of old shoes arranged along the pavement; now to a stand of gaudy tea-trays; then to a shop with red handkerchiefs and blue checked shirts, fluttering backwards and forwards, and a counter built up outside on the kerb, behind which are boys beseeching custom. At the door of a tea-shop, with its hundred white globes of light, stands a man delivering bills, thanking the public for past favours, and ‘defying competition’. Here, alongside the road, are some half-dozen headless tailors’ dummies, dressed in Chesterfields and fustian jackets, each labelled, ‘Look at the prices,’ or ‘Observe the quality.’ After this is a butcher’s shop, crimson and white with meat piled up to the first-floor, in front of which the butcher himself, in his blue coat, walks up and down, sharpening his knife on the steel that hangs to his waist. A little further on stands the clean family, begging; the father with his head down as if in shame, and a box of lucifers held forth in his hand – the boys in newly-washed pinafores, and the tidily got-up mother with a child at her breast. This stall is green and white with bunches of turnips – that red with apples, the next yellow with onions, and another purple with pickling cabbages. One minute you pass a man with an umbrella turned inside up and full of prints; the next, you hear one with a peepshow of Mazeppa, and Paul Jones the pirate, describing the pictures to the boys looking in at the little round windows. Then is heard the sharp snap of the percussion-cap from the crowd of lads firing at the target for nuts; and the moment afterwards, you see a black man half-clad in white, and shivering in the cold with tracts in his hand, or else you hear the sounds of music from ‘Frazier’s Circus’, on the other side of the road, and the man outside the door of the penny concert, beseeching you to ‘Be in time – be in time!’ as Mr Somebody is just about to sing his favourite song of the ‘Knife Grinder’. Such, indeed, is the riot, the struggle, and the scramble for a living, that the confusion and uproar of the New-cut on Saturday night have a bewildering and saddening effect upon the thoughtful mind.

  Each salesman tries his utmost to sell his wares, tempting the passerby with his bargains. The boy with his stock of herbs offers ‘a double ’andful of fine parsley for a penny’; the man with the donkey-cart filled with turnips has three lads to shout for him to their utmost, with their ‘Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you think of this here? A penny a bunch – hurrah for free trade! Here’s your turnips!’ Until it is seen and heard, we have no sense of the scramble that is going on throughout London for a living. The same scene takes place at the Brill – the same in Leather-lane – the same in Tottenham-court-road – the same in Whitecross-street; go to whatever corner of the metropolis you please, either on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning, and there is the same shouting and the same struggling to get the penny profit out of the poor man’s Sunday dinner.

  Since the above description was written, the New Cut has lost much of its noisy and brilliant glory. In consequence of a New Police regulation, ‘stands’ or ‘pitches’ have been forbidden, and each coster, on a market night, is now obliged, under pain of the lock-up house, to carry his tray, or keep moving with his barrow. The gay stalls have been replaced by deal boards, some sodden with wet fish, others stained purple with blackberries, or brown with walnut-peel; and the bright lamps are almost totally superseded by the dim, guttering candle. Even if the pole under the tray or ‘shallow’ is seen resting on the ground, the policeman on duty is obliged to interfere.

  The mob of purchasers has diminished one-half; and instead of the road being filled with customers and trucks, the pavement and kerbstones are scarcely crowded.

  The Sunday Morning Markets

  [pp. 12–13] Nearly every poor man’s market does its Sunday trade. For a few hours on the Sabbath morning, the noise, bustle, and scramble of the Saturday night are repeated, and but for this opportunity many a poor family would pass a dinnerless Sunday. The system of paying the mechanic late on the Saturday night – and more particularly of paying a man his wages in a public-house – when he is tired with his day’s work lures him to the tavern, and there the hours fly quickly enough beside the warm tap-room fire, so that by the time the wife comes for her husband’s wages, she finds a large portion of them gone in drink, and the streets half cleared, so that the Sunday market is the only chance of getting the Sunday’s dinner.

  Of all these Sunday-morning markets, the Brill, perhaps, furnishes the busiest scene; so that it may be taken as a type of the whole.

  The streets in the neighbourhood are quiet and empty. The shops are closed with their different-coloured shutters, and the people round about are dressed in the shiney cloth of the holiday suit. There are no ‘cabs’, and but few omnibuses to disturb the rest, and men walk in the road as safely as on the footpath.

  As you enter the Brill the market sounds are scarcely heard. But at each step the low hum grows gradually into the noisy shouting, until at last the different cries become distinct, and the hubbub, din, and confusion of a thousand voices bellowing at once again fill the air. The road and footpath are crowded, as on the over-night; the men are standing in groups, smoking and talking; whilst the women run to and fro, some with the white round turnips showing out of their filled aprons, others with cabbages under their arms, and a piece of red meat dangling from their hands. Only a few of the shops are closed, but the butcher’s and the coal-shed are filled with customers, and from the door of the shut-up baker’s, the women come streaming forth w
ith bags of flour in their hands, while men sally from the halfpenny barber’s smoothing their clean-shaven chins. Walnuts, blacking, apples, onions, braces, combs, turnips, herrings, pens, and corn-plaster, are all bellowed out at the same time. Labourers and mechanics, still unshorn and undressed, hang about with their hands in their pockets, some with their pet terriers under their arms. The pavement is green with the refuse leaves of vegetables, and round a cabbage-barrow the women stand turning over the bunches, as the man shouts, ‘Where you like, only a penny.’ Boys are running home with the breakfast herring held in a piece of paper, and the side-pocket of the apple-man’s stuff coat hangs down with the weight of the halfpence stored within it. Presently the tolling of the neighbouring church bells breaks forth. Then the bustle doubles itself, the cries grow louder, the confusion greater. Women run about and push their way through the throng, scolding the saunterers, for in half an hour the market will close. In a little time the butcher puts up his shutters, and leaves the door still open; the policemen in their clean gloves come round and drive the street-sellers before them, and as the clock strikes eleven the market finishes, and the Sunday’s rest begins.